Paying Cash and Getting Out of Debt. . . .

I meant to post this on Friday.  Sorry, this is my financial Friday post.

When my hubby and I got married, he was of the mind set that if you do not have the cash to pay for something you do not get it.   Luckily he was willing to have a mortgage.   We moved from an apartment to our first house with in our first year of marriage.  We did not have enough furniture for our new house so we had a few empty rooms.  Our beautiful formal living room was empty, except for a little ficus tree my sister had given us.   Because of my hubbys strong feelings of no credit cards it stayed empty for a few years.   When we had saved enough to pay cash we went furniture shopping.   We found some great deals at a little known shop way out of the way and we filled our living room.   I am telling all of this because a friend has just bought a new house that is bigger than their house now and she was worried about how she  would fill it with furniture.  This brought back these fond memories of our first years together.   I always tell things on myself because I feel like it helps others see that it is ok to make mistakes and that there are other people out there struggling too. There is no reason to go into debt to fill your house with furniture either.   There is no shame in having an empty room while you are saving your money to buy furniture.   You can also find great deals at consignment shops and even yard sales.   My empty living room came in handy one winter when our power was out for a few days.  We pulled our mattress into the living room and laid it in front of the fire place to keep warm.  This was the winter we had so much ice.  Our power was only out for three days, there were others that were without power for much longer.  If we had a  living room full of furniture our mattress would not have fit and we would have been very cold and uncomfortable.
Here is another funny about my empty living room.  This was when Christmas Around the World was popular and they had home parties and such.  I decided I would have a Christmas Around the World party.  The representative came in and set her stuff up, luckily she was also a friend of the family, so there was no judging of the empty space.   We all sat on the floor and played bingo for FREE stuff.   Fun was had by all and nobody minded sitting on the floor.
Save your money and pay cash.